Here's how you know you're in the midst of old people being grouchy about superheroes; a promo spot for RED 2, a movie based on a comic book, touts that it has no superheroes in it. Just, you know, Bruce Willis doing superhuman things.

It's something I hear a lot, surprisingly: People tell me they'd like to get into comics but there are too many issues, they're not really into reading about superheroes, and so on. OK, I can work with that: Here are five comics with not a superhero in sight that are absolutely worth reading.

High adventure titles don't get more fun than this. Set in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this epic story of terraforming and frontier exploration from Joe Harris and Martin Morazzo juggles a lot of threads, and juggles them lightheartedly and cleverly. It's also not remotely preachy; Harris cleverly ensures even his protagonist is a bit more mercenary than hippie.

Garth Ennis is well-known for his bookPreacher, but, if I'm being honest, I kind of ran out of gas on Ennis until this, only giving it a shot because it was a number one and I try to read as many number ones as possible.

I'm glad I did. This noir is Ennis at his least jokey and most serious, and it takes a theme that he normally uses for comedy, those entrusted with the law taking it into their own hands, and lingers on what would go horribly wrong if police officers actually did that. And it works. Craig Cermak's art helps a lot by keeping it toned down, as well. The result is a tense, gripping thriller of a book.

Yes, The Crow normally fits the standard for a superhero. A gritty '90s anti-hero, maybe, but still a superhero. But it's in how the story is written; The Crow this time is not some pissed-off dude, or a Jew giving the Nazis the business... but a little girl. More to the point, the story centers around a former police officer who can't let the case of this girl's death go, even though it's destroying his life.

The first two issues of this three-part series have been some of the best writing J. O'Barr has done, period. Fair warning that the series is a brutal gut-punch of book, dealing fairly directly with some ugly themes. But it's also a heart-breaking and genuinely moving book about loss. O'Barr's breakdowns are built by Antoine Dodé into something simultaneously gorgeous and sad. It's not an "easy" book, but it's a genuinely great one.

Join The Discussion

C’mon Ennis’ The Boys was fantastic and I totally couldn’t put it down.
I couldn’t agree more about Fatale though, it’s like Dashiell Hammett and Lovecraft had a baby drawn by the always amazing Sean Phillips.

I thought David Lapham’s runs were even more disturbing. Reading Lapham’s stuff always makes me wonder if the guy has a history of abuse or something, because he always goes to some seriously dark fucked up places in his books.